


when a reindeer herder finds a reindeer

by theseerasures



Category: Frozen (Disney Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:28:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23061709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theseerasures/pseuds/theseerasures
Summary: He has this now. This, and the Trolls since always, and Sven since before that. Does it even matter that there was a him, evenbeforebefore? Or that he doesn’t really remember how and when that him ended?Post-Frozen II: In the wake of all the recent upheavals, Kristoff can't help but feel a little stuck in traction.
Relationships: Anna/Kristoff (Disney), Elsa & Kristoff (Disney)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Spiritual successor to [Chapter 9](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1323370/chapters/2827060) of "measure your life," and borrows context from [Chapter 13](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1323370/chapters/3184190).
> 
> Now with author's commentary in second chapter! Please view as Entire Work to get endnotes to work.

[1]He’s not exactly sure what jolts him awake in the middle of the night, so Kristoff just lets the heavy lull of sleep wash over him again while half-heartedly trying to feel out what’s going on. He’d heard…something…

The room feels weirdly cold, so he tucks himself deeper into the nest of blankets, bumping into something warm and solid. _Anna_ , his sluggish mind informs him, shortly before Anna helpfully confirms that guess by letting out a loud snort and smacking him right across his chest.

That at least gets him to open his eyes. Anna’s a lump of bed hair and drool next to him, but there’s someone else in the room—sitting hunched at the edge of the bed.

Kristoff squints in the darkness. “Elsa?”

Pieces of the night before start filtering in. Right. Elsa had come over to visit. Anna had said “Family sleepover!” Kristoff had said “What?”[2]

And now here they all are. “Elsa?” he whispers again.

“I’m fine,” Elsa says. Her breathing’s coming out in visible puffs in the sudden chill,[3] and Kristoff hears it stutter slightly before going back to being purposefully, painfully even.

“You sure?” His eyes flicker down to Anna’s sleeping form. “Should I—”

“No,” Elsa replies at once. Her hand flies up—to stop him from shaking Anna awake, Kristoff thinks—but it just ends up colliding into his palm.

She’s freezing; his fingers automatically close around hers in a loose clasp. “Okay,” he agrees quietly.

Elsa stares down at their hands before letting them drop bonelessly onto the mattress, like the prospect of either holding on or letting go exhausts her. “Let her sleep,” she repeats, her voice cracking halfway through.

Kristoff doesn’t reply. He tightens his grip, squeezes hard enough to hurt, willing the warm life in his hand to pass into hers.[4]

Eventually, the room heats back up, and he gets small squeeze in return. “Thanks.”

“Anytime,” he promises. Means it, too. She’d do the same for him; has done plenty of times already.[5]

He settles back into the covers, but Elsa doesn’t move. After a while she clears her throat. “I think I’ll get some air. Just…a quick walk on the grounds.”

“Huh?” His head got sleep-muddled again as soon as it hit the pillow. “Oh—sure, yeah. I can—”

“Kristoff, it’s okay,” She stops him before he can untangle himself out of bed, “I’ll be alright on my own. You should go back to sleep.”

“But I—” A huge yawn cracks his jaw before he can finish. Elsa cocks an eyebrow at him. She looks…almost back to normal. “Are you sure?” He asks anyway.

“I’m sure.” She pats his shoulder, and is out the bed and through the door before he can argue further.

* * *

He wakes up hours later with a sharp pant.

The sun hasn’t hit the bed yet; it must be still pretty early in the morning. Anna’s completely starfished out, asleep, but Elsa’s nowhere to be found.

Kristoff gets up, letting a muffled grumble escape as he scrubs his face with his hands. Some things never change, alright—like certain people’s tendency to decide they’re done sleeping as soon as they wake up, even if they wake up in the middle of the night.[6]

He means to check in Anna’s office, or maybe the library, but finds himself wandering out of the castle altogether and making for the stables. Elsa said she was going for a walk, right? Maybe she stayed out.

Sven’s still asleep too, but pokes his muzzle into Kristoff’s hand anyway when he meanders in. “Hey, buddy,” Kristoff says, happy to oblige with a few scratches.

Instead of waking Sven up fully, though, he just ends up sitting down on the floor. Sven cracks an eye open at this, letting out a soft, questioning bark.

“I’m okay,” he answers quickly. “Just…getting some thoughts together.”

His fingers start idly running over Sven’s coarse pelt: smoothing out matted, tangled parts, pulling out burs, bits of dirt. It’s been a long, hard year for them, but when hasn’t that been true? They’ve been through a lot together, him and Sven.

Something in stomach twists slightly, but he shoves it aside. Anna’s gonna be upset if Elsa misses breakfast just because she lost track of time, so he really should get up, get going and look for her.[7]

“I was having a great dream,” a drowsy voice drifts in through the stable doors, “It was warm, and sunny, and I got to stay in bed past noon for once, and my family and I, we just hung out, because it was the weekend.”

“That does sound pretty awesome,” Kristoff agrees, feeling his lips tug up, just a little bit.

“I know, right?” The door swings open to reveal a yawning Anna. “Then I woke up and remembered: oh yeah! My family is filled with obnoxious workaholic early-riser types.”

“Hey, don’t look at me,” Kristoff replies as she drops down unceremoniously next to him on the floor. “Elsa got up first. She had a…it was still dark.”

“Huh,” Anna says, staying where she is.

That makes him frown. “You don’t wanna go look for her?”

It takes awhile for her to answer. “You know what I wonder sometimes?” she says finally, “Who takes care of Elsa when she has a nightmare in the Forest?”

He looks down at her; she looks serious about the question. “I guess it could be…Honeymaren, or Yelana, or Ryder…”

“Maybe the Spirits, too,” Anna agrees, “But it must have taken some adjusting, right? She probably had to do it herself, at least for a while. Maybe she still does.”

“And that’s…okay now?” He’s starting to feel a little lost in all this. “You think Elsa—”

“I think Elsa’s gonna come back when she’s done working through whatever she needs to work through, and if she just left without saying goodbye I’ll murder her myself,” Anna says. Then she frowns slightly. “Besides, she has a magic horse that takes her anywhere she wants now. It’s not like I can catch up with her even if I want to.”

He studies her for a moment, then throws an arm around her shoulders. “Nah. I bet you still could.”[8]

Anna smiles at him before cuddling into his chest. “So what about you?”

“What about me?” He starts a little at the tone of his voice—like he’s bitter.

Anna doesn’t seem to notice. “You getting up freakishly early is normal, but you’re usually doing stuff instead of moping around in the stables. Wanna tell me what that’s about, _sydani_?”

She says that last word like she’s proud of it. “What?”

“ _Sydani,_ ” Anna repeats, “You know, like heart? You call me that sometimes when I wake up from _my_ nightmares. I figured it was a word from when you were little.”[9]

Her head tilts up, searching his face anxiously now. “Did I say it wrong? The old dictionary in our library wasn’t super clear about the pronunciation—”

“No, you said it right,” Kristoff says, “Or, well—I don’t know.”

He stares blankly ahead. Sven’s snoring again. _Sydani_. He thinks he _does_ remember hearing it, some place warm and small with voices that sound like songs.

“I didn’t know,” he continues finally, feeling that something twist in his stomach again, “What it meant.”

Anna’s quiet for a second; then she tucks her head down again and starts playing with the calluses on his hands. “Did you have a dream about them? Your birth family.”

Kristoff shrugs, letting a little sliver of the something expand, just a little. “I don’t remember. So…probably.”

A soft huff of air hits his chest as Anna breathes out. “We could try finding them, you know.”

“You’d do that?” He asks, startled.

“ _Kristoff_.”

Yeah, okay—he probably deserves that eye roll. “Right.”[10]

She nods firmly. “We can take the others, too. Or not! It’s your call. It can also be just us, with the finding-stuff-out, and the danger—there’ll probably be danger.[11] It can be like a husband-and-wife fact-finding mission! Unless you wanna go before the wedding? The timing’s a little tighter there, but I bet I can make it work.”

Her energy for the idea is infectious, but the something digs harder into Kristoff again, makes him look away. “I’m not even sure if I wanna know, to be honest.”

He has this now. This, and the Trolls since always, and Sven since before that. Does it even matter that there was a him, even _before_ before? Or that he doesn’t really remember how and when that him ended? Maybe he just got lost one day and they never found him. Or maybe they left him behind; because they had to, or because they just didn’t…

The something lodges itself in his throat. He stares down hard at the top of Anna’s head, willing it to go away. Why should it matter whether he was left behind or did the leaving? He’s seen enough these past years to know how deeply either one can hurt. What will knowing for sure give him, anyway? It won’t bring them back, and he’s not dumb enough to think otherwise.[12]

“That’s okay, too,” Anna says after he’s been quiet for a while. She squeezes his hand. “We get a whole life to figure it out.”

He feels the something ease up when he squeezes back. “That’s the plan.”[13]

They probably look goofy, just smiling at each other on the stables floor, but whatever—it’s nice.

Then something in the rafters squeaks. “What?”

But Anna just rolls her eyes again. “Elsa,” she calls out, “If you sent Bruni up there so he can jump down on my head, I swear…”

The menacing trail-off apparently works, because a few seconds later the door swings open. “I didn’t,” Elsa says, unconvincingly, as Bruni jumps down onto Anna’s shoulder instead.

“Uh huh,” Anna replies skeptically, but she gives Bruni a little pat and kicks her feet into Elsa’s lap when Elsa sits next to them.

“Good walk?” Kristoff asks.

Her smile looks a little careworn, but it’s real. “Good. Good talk?”

“Good,” Anna answers for him.[14] He nods, then tilts his head back so it can rest against the stall. The low light of the stables is making him sleepy again, and he’s pretty sure he’s not the only one; Anna’s practically horizontal now. Sven’s still snoring away, everything’s nice and warm…

Elsa’s stomach lets out a long, aggressive growl. “Sorry,” she says sheepishly as they both blink up at her. “Maybe we should…head back to the castle instead of bonding in a dirty, foodless shack?”

“Sven would share a carrot with you if you asked,” Kristoff teases, but he’s getting up already, and pulling Anna along with him.

The sun’s pretty high up when they head outside, and there’s not a cloud in the sky. A gorgeous day. “Looks like your dream might come true after all,” he says to Anna.

“Hm,” she says neutrally, and then starts to whistle.

It’s a pretty tune, if a little eerie-sounding, and it makes Elsa stop in her tracks.[15] “Anna,” she says, eyes narrowing in suspicion. “What are you—”

Kristoff’s pretty sure he hears a flutey chime in the breeze—almost like laughter—before a pile of mud flings itself from nowhere into her face.

“Ha!” Anna gloats, “I knew it—your ice dresses can totally get dirty.”

“ _That_ was something you wanted to know?” Kristoff asks, nonplussed.

Anna opens her mouth to answer, but they’re both distracted as Elsa slowly reaches up to wipe the mud from her eyes. Then, without a word, she waves her hand, siphoning the filth from her dress and folding them into a snowball that grows, and grows, and grows, until it’s bigger than most people.

“Wow!” Kristoff says.

“Oh, no,” Anna says.

She grabs his hand and starts to run.[16]


	2. Endnotes

1Title taken from the outtake song "When Everything Falls Apart." I liked the idea of using a quasi-canonical song to propel a fic that's all about the half-remembered, the parts of yourself you leave behind, and this verse sticks out no matter how many times I listen. I think because it sounds so much like received wisdom--like Kristoff heard it from someone else, and then internalized it. So one of the motivating questions driving this fic was, naturally, who might have told him to think about the world this way, with this metaphor?[return to text]

2It was a little tricky figuring out how to appropriately update the original, because that fic was entirely about the very specific co-dependency that they all found themselves in after the Thaw, to the point where Elsa and Kristoff were literally standing guard over Anna after she had a nightmare. I knew this sequel couldn't have them go back to that, but I very much like the idea of all three of them bundling up in one bed occasionally still; for Anna especially, I think it comes out of a continued enchantment with a part of her childhood that she never got to have. In the end I just decided not to make a big thing of it, because the characters wouldn't at this point. It's just something that they do, and do with less frequency now that the need for it in the early days has almost completely subsided into want.[return to text]

3Well, we all know that Elsa's breath canonically DOESN'T fog up in the cold unless she is on the verge of death, so what could this mean? Is it that her nightmare made her freeze the room to Ahtohallan levels of cold, or that her dying made her more susceptible somehow?? The answer, dear readers, is actually "I forgot that thing about Elsa's breath not fogging up until it was too late." The mental image is too good to pass up, anyway.[return to text]

4This moment was adapted from something similar in Elaine Castillo's _America is Not the Heart_. I don't think Elsa was consciously trying to do ANYTHING with her hand. It really was just this blind, abortive gesture--grasping for some semblance of control, some semblance of human connection. For something to tug her back to the world, really, and it couldn't have been Anna, because in front of Anna it's still all too easy for Elsa to just completely fall apart. Luckily, Kristoff is excellent at grounding people, on their terms, and Elsa knows it; that's why it's easier to let herself collapse a little into him.[return to text]

5The post-nightmare hurt/comfort is one of the dynamics that I wanted to grow from the original. In that fic, the Elsa and Kristoff solidarity had been rooted completely in Anna; here, I wanted to create the sense that they not only have their own discrete relationship, but also that some parts of it are actually not available to Anna. Canon's pretty much said explicitly that Anna's the world's heaviest sleeper, and Elsa has had years of practice doing EVERYTHING quietly, so I really do think that--even at this point in their relationship--Anna's direct experience with Elsa's nightmares is fairly limited (she definitely KNOWS about them, no matter how much eye makeup Elsa slathers on). It's a similar (if less extreme) situation with Anna and Kristoff, so I like to imagine that at some point, maybe without even noticing, Elsa and Kristoff started taking responsibility for each other's sleeping woes. Anna has an inkling about all this, and it probably took a little soul-searching for her to realize that they weren't actually trying to shut her out and come to terms with it.[return to text]

6This line took a LOT of fiddling, mainly because I was trying to restrain myself from splooging my sleep-related headcanons everywhere when that's not what this fic is about. But I do think both sides of this--that Elsa's the worst sleeper in the world because just about anything will wake her and get her up immediately and she doesn't so much sleep on bad days/weeks/months as take disjointed naps in increasingly odd locales (they have a running tally of the weirdest places they've found her asleep, Olaf's currently winning), that Kristoff's just kind of resigned to it at this point--are illustrative of the post- _Frozen II_ world they're all living in. Some habits (and wounds, and habits that are wounds) you never really grow out of, but the ways that you cope will change and get recontextualized. Damaging attempts to self-isolate transform slowly into just...taking some time to yourself, to clear your mind.[return to text]

7And the idea of change, particularly with respect to people's internal growth and how that might alter relationship dynamics, is obviously something that all three of them have to struggle with, but it's a little different for Kristoff than for Elsa or Anna, because...well, I think he's gotten used to being Mr. Practical. Hufflepuffs are really good finders, and he's kind of thought of it as his job for the past three years--to build on the work he'd done in the first movie, when he was Anna's way to the North Mountain, to her sister. This is not to say that he's been, like, this happiness pump for both of them--just that he likes to be Of Use. He's gotten through his whole life by being quietly helpful, and not in anyone's way, ~~and being a grumpy lil bitch,~~ and it all goes back to the _before_ before of the first time he was abandoned, and a life that he doesn't even remember, but is starting to dream about more and more. He's starting to realize that he CAN take up more space now, and he's not sure if he likes it.[return to text]

8The saving complication in all this is, as always, Anna, because even though Kristoff doesn't like being dramatic or asking for anything and most times he tries either with her he gets burned black by it--he wants to keep trying with her all the same. I think it's part of the thrill of their relationship, for him: the feeling of being a step behind. So he can catch her, sure, but also relishing in his own trust that she's always going to take him with her and lead him somewhere AWESOME. "Lost in the Woods" made that abundantly clear: he's lived his whole life as the cautious outsider, even with his adopted family, but Anna makes him want to throw caution into the wind and jump after her. I think it's something similar for Anna, when she thinks about Kristoff: she loves that he'll ask her to explain and justify what she thinks, and even challenges her beliefs, because that keeps her from spinning off into the abyss that comes with certainty.[return to text]

9I fretted a little over the--well, the _conceit_ of using one's own made-up word and affectation as intertext, but this is the heart of the fic (pun intended, natch). If there is a reindeer herder for this fic, then it's Anna and not Kristoff, because it's Anna who had to drag herself from bed after what was probably a whole work week to take care of Kristoff, and it's Kristoff who, despite his efforts to the contrary, ends up letting himself be found. (Elsa's a little different, because Elsa's trying become someone who can find and save _herself_ without sliding back into the old bad routine, but even she lets herself be pulled into Anna's orbit by the end.) But Anna's using Kristoff's word to tell Kristoff that he's loved, because without Kristoff Anna would have never gotten this far. Taking it another step: Kristoff only said _sydani_ , only shared his wisdom on reindeer herders, because Anna opened that door for him. The fact that he said it unconsciously, without knowing its exact meaning or the circumstances when he first heard it, means as little as the fact that Anna never MEANT to show Kristoff how to love and never meant to love him at all. Love leaves its traces even when nothing else does.[return to text]

10One of the hurdles I had to get past--and this is something that Bobby and Kristen actually talked about when they discussed "Kristoff Lullaby"--is what, exactly, made Kristoff This Way when he HAS so many loved ones in the first place? Much as I find the Trolls to be...there in the movies, I don't think it's fair to just forget about them, and the fact that they were there for him in his formative years when no one else was. It was hard to thread the needle between "Kristoff the perpetual loner" and "Kristoff who has a loving family," but in the end I actually think the second builds into the first. This is something that I touch on in a later fic, but: the Trolls are not human. They're bound by different rules and are marked by magic and a certain type of stasis, and even though they love him as one of their own, he's NOT one of them, and they can't do everything he wishes they could do. So I think part of what drives his surprise in this bit isn't so much the old _people will beat you and curse you and cheat you_ as it is the unconscious acceptance that sometimes people just can't help him, for one reason or another. He's not upset about it. It's just the way things are.[return to text]

11"There'll probably be danger" is actually inscribed on the official Arendellian coat of arms.[return to text]

12There's a little unconscious dig at Elsa here, who very much DID think that she could bring her parents back in some way if only she dove deep enough into the past. But it's not all clear-eyed judgement from Kristoff either. I thought a lot about _Shazam_ as I was writing this fic--how Billy's sense of self rested on finding his birth mother so much that I could tell, from the very first flashback, exactly what had happened to him. Kristoff's coming at the same question from a very different place in life: he's older, and he already has several support systems in place. Everything that Billy would read as a benefit Kristoff would read as a cost: at this point, whatever truth he'd find would be a disappointing reminder of the fallibility of people, even the people who were supposed to love and take care of him. Better not to hope in the first place.[return to text]

13I wanted to slip this reference from "What Do You Know About Love" in because it's a good shorthand for the ways they've grown since that song. Because this line of logic from Kristoff--that people will disappoint you, so maybe it's better not to ask for help or find things out--is never going to sit well for Anna, whose number one belief is that with enough teamwork and yelling the universe will eventually just throw its hands up and give you what you want. (It gave her Elsa back, after all.) (Twice! It gave her Elsa back _twice_ , so there.) But at the same time...she gets him now, and understands that this is something deeply personal that he might need to figure out for himself. And she's willing to help him, maybe even change his mind, but she knows that it's not going to happen all at once, so she just needs to trust that they have the time to do it. And in exchange he surrenders to her original logic: that they love each other, and that love IS strong enough for them to handle this and everything else. I think what they've both learned since the North Mountain is love doesn't happen at a point, whether at the beginning when eyes meet and there's chemistry and then you sing a ballad, or at the end, after you've worked and worked and you've hit the top of the mountain. Love is something that continuously unfolds; it's a project unto itself, and they have to decide for themselves if it's something worth working on. And they have.[return to text]

14The conclusion went through SEVERAL iterations. At one point I was just going to end with Kristoff and Anna quietly making out in the stables, but it felt unfair to both the original fic and the beginning of THIS fic to not end on a trio moment. At another point it was going to end with Elsa causing some massive property damage, as is her wont, but that felt like it would land too close to "Elsa still needs constant supervision, actually." At yet another point Elsa was going to fall out of the rafters herself, because she was ~meditating there (she fell asleep). In all the iterations where Elsa was present, though, I had some version of this circular exchange. I wanted Kristoff and Elsa to confirm their dynamic relayed in the first scene, I wanted to confirm Anna's trust that Elsa would be fine on her own, I wanted Anna and Kristoff to confirm THEIR dynamic from here, and most of all, I wanted them to trust each other enough to not have to press for details.[return to text]

15Another thing I had to finagle. It's the four-note Voice call from the movie. Anna's heard it, because Elsa was mimicking it before they hit the ship, but Kristoff wasn't there and wouldn't recognize it (still doesn't), so I had to keep that in mind. Honestly, this allusion was really more for me than for anyone reading (kudos if you DID catch it, though); I liked too much the idea that Anna's co-opted the _dies irae_ that led her sister to her death and turned it into a tune for Spirit-affiliated pranks.[return to text]

16He'd follow her anywhere. Even if it eventually gets him caught in the crossfire of some green slime.[return to text]


End file.
